New petrol station opening hours to be 7am to 10pm

Apparently, we will not be able to fill up at petrol stations anytime after 10pm anymore, thanks to a decision by the Petrol Dealers Association of Malaysia to go ahead with the new closing time with or without the approval of the government.

Yesterday, Association president Alang Zari Ishak said petrol stations along the highways would still remain open 24 hours, but in a report by The Star on page N3 today, acting president Major (Rtd) Wahid Bidin says the decision would also affect petrol stations along the highways.

The petrol dealers cited problems such as armed robberies, increased security costs, higher wages for workers, low night sales, soaring rentals and higher electricity tariffs as reasons for the decision. Average collection after 10pm was only about RM1,000 per station, thus it was not profitable to keep the station open as the margins earned from the RM1,000 during the night did not justify the salary and electricity costs.

They also want customers to bear the 1% commission that is payable to the banks with credit card transactions.

The new opening hours for the petrol stations is proposed to be 7am to 10pm, and the decision is likely to go into effect in 2 months time. I hope they decide not to go ahead with it in this two month’s time, or the government does something to stop them.

BTW, if you are wondering why the association had a president yesterday and today suddenly it’s spokesperson is an acting president, what happened was ex-president Alang Zari Ishak was voted out by 51 out of 65 members for allegedly failing to champion the association’s interests.

After dabbling for years in the IT industry, Paul Tan initially began this site as a general blog covering various topics of personal interest. With an increasing number of readers paying rapt attention to the motoring stories, one thing led to another and the rest, as they say, is history. An avid electronic gadget aficionado as well as big-time coffee lover, he's also the executive producer of the Driven motoring TV programme.

so the highway petrol station also closed at 10pm……for Johorian or Malaccan who want to travel to Northern Area from night time, are they going to buy a tank of spare fuel & put it into the luggage boot? In this case we don’t even know along the highway where is the 24hrs stations, hence I can see in future there will be less night time traveller….wonder what is going to happen for logistic company who frequent night time travelling…..???

“Apparently, we will not be able to fill up at petrol stations anytime after 10pm anymore, thanks to a decision by the Petrol Dealers Association of Malaysia to go ahead with the new closing time with or without the approval of the government.”

can gov do anything.. no lah…
Charge overhere there charge overhere..
maybe after this:
1. to introduce pay-toilet,
2. parking charge when u fuel the petrol,
3. charge for pump in the air for tyre..
4. option refueling with manual (by hand) or pat extra if wit electric

Those buggers! Cant they just be considerate and provide some wee bit of service for people! This is almost ridiculous to make such selfish decision without considering those who got ran out of fuel in the middle of midnight and helplessly waiting for 7am to come.

What rising cost and thing? Arent they already sucked enough of our hard earned dollar every single minutes? And now they want to save cost and suck more! Even want us to bear the credit card cost! Why cant they just return some of the favor back to the road users by opening a bit late?

And those lazy bastards want to start business at 7am??? In KL 6am already rush hour everybody hitting the road to get to work. You know how inconsiderate it is to start at 7am?

Has you ever see 7-11 complaining about security and rising cost? Electric cost? Just off most of the lights and air con, it cost penny to operate a few lampu and fuel pump isnt it?

Electricity cost, off air con, off most of the lights except the bill board(its on anyway) and the one above the active pump, how much will it cost?? RM500 per MONTH? I dont know how efficient are those bright lamp, lets give it RM1000 electricity for night LIGHTINGS per MONTH.

Each petrol station unable to bear an extra cost of less then RM5000 per month? Dont make me laugh.

What time are petrol stations closing in general now? The Mobil in SS1 closes at 10pm which is reasonable because it’s a urban housing area and there are other petrol stations on busier roads nearby that are open later.
The Shell in Damansara Heights closes later (no idea of what time though) than the Esso next to it which usually closes around 11pm.
Surely it’s a matter for the individual petrol station owners to decide on their operational times based on their own knowledge of their customers’ needs.
To dictate blanket operational hours for petrol stations does not make sense – for the station owners or motorists – and would probably cause more problems than solve them.

I am fine with closing early. But the 1% credit card pushed to customers must be VETOED!. Its unfair towards who use credit card solely to pump petrol. Petrol station should pay for it, as they want to offer better service. Say on average a user would pump rm50 and 200 ppl use credit card, they will only need to pay rm100. This is a small sum compared to what they are getting. This is not acceptable from the customer point of view!!!

They are really going backward…. how dare they say that RM1000 per night is not worthwhile, when their workers average pay not even RM50/day… its a straight way of showing that even if we have the first world infra, the mind is still frozen like in a third world country…. cannot cope up with the pace..

Seriously tho, it makes no sense for petrol stations in low turn over areas to operate 24 hours. But don’t make it a blanket ruling lah. Regardless of what time of night there will always be traffic in KL city for example.

As for the credit card charge, I think the real culprit here are the (again) the banks.

Petrol dealers only make like (IIRC) 4% margins on petrol. That means that when you pump rm50 of petrol, the dealer only makes rm 2. Financial institutions make BILLIONS every year from credit cards, 50sen is nothing to them. But to a small time petrol station owner, thats 25% of his already slim margins. So I think a fair solution would be for the finanacial institutions to reduce their charges. 2% of the profits sounds more fair than 2% of revenue in this case.

Just like TNG.
Provide a service but consumer have to bear it. I’m referring to the TNG in carpark and the auto reload.
Close at 10PM. Is too early. Should postpone it to 12PM. Many people worked until 10PM. Example case :
Shopping close at 10PM. People shop until 10PM then car no petrol. So how? No need go home already. Then they will say, why don’t you pump before go to shopping? If is weekdays it maybe a rush to shopping mall after work. Totally not convienant to us. And those people working at shopping mall. After work no need pump petrol too. – Close too early.
Every morning is a rush to us to work. Some purposely wake up early to avoid jam for example i think some start to drive to work at around 645AM. The petrol station open at 7AM. – Open too late.

Charge 1%
CC usage is to makes people more convienant. Again consumer have to bear it. Speechless…… next time i think whatever also consumer bear it. But salary is not increase. Daily expenses yearly increase..

those dealers are damn selfish. obviously, they should have considered d negative consequences when they decided to operate as dealers!
all they could think of is $$$$$!! there are so many ppl on the waiting list to become one.

The 1% charges should be borne by either the card company/banks or by the petrol station.
We have already paid for the fuel, & we self-service at the pump why pay more 1%.
We have also paid for the card annualfee and support the creditcard by using it… why pay more 1%.

This is a cost either by the CC company or petrol station for doing business in Malaysia, why charge to consumer?? Day light robbery? It is a business COST.

What costs? Do you really need to hire so many people to work at a petrol pump?

First you put in CC pay stations so we can self service (so you can hire less attendents). The you reduce your “member points”. Now you said that CC fees are too expensive for you and we have to pay more to use a Credit card?

I dont see that there EVER WAS a mandatory 24 hours operation on petrol stations? I see many urban stations that dont open 24hours. So where is the problem?

But a highway system must have 24hour stations. Since we are paying toll, ask the Highway operators to foot the bill and keep them open 24hrs.

To Shell,

I use you because

1) you have convenient CC payment system
2) Open longer hours than the stations in my area

You reduce those services, there will be no incentive for me to use you.

Maybe I’m only one user, but I’m sure many others feel the same.

They reason they want a “Blanket” ruling is that they dont want a rouge Brand/Provider offering better services than the rest. They want a artificial level playing field.

You conplain that you dont make enough money, then you go ahead and build a station next to your 2 neighbours. Where is the LOGIC?

People do run out of Fuel for whatever reasons in the wee hours of the morning. Thats mighty selfish of you.

What laughable hours. Say hello to a country full of freelance roadside petrol hawkers and stranded cars. Scenes typical of 3rd world countries, all thanks to spoilt greedy idiots. Not to mention every major accident is going to end up in flames since everyone will be carrying cans of petrol in their boot.

Mid-morning and mid-afternoon hours are slower too, maybe they’ll want to close for those too next?

Walau eh! This is so damn inconvenient. Imagine having your car running out of petrol in the middle of the night, in the wee hours of the morning. No thanks to all these petrol stations that close at 10pm! :(

When everyone else in the world is going with 24 hours operations in all aspects of any business, we Malaysians decide to have limited operating hours! Proves to the world that we are a bunch of lazy bums!

However, I personally think that this idea wouldn’t last. Remember the use of credit cards at petrol stations some time ago. As I clearly remember that we once banned the use of credit cards at petrol stations. Today, we can use all sorts of credit cards at any petrol station.

i think the 7am to 10pm should be the MINIMUM hours. Longer opening hours must be based on business reasons. If there is sufficient volume, they will open later. Sometimes, thse stations opened later as there are still lots of ppl looking to fill up.

I do not understand why the need to prevent station from opening with longer hours?

i tink the main issue is the poor security…thr r alot of those stations encounter break in…this is a really bad example of how poor police enforcement is becoming….too many gangs around now….nt enought police presence

the govt must offer them for extra security and the banks can stop being so greedy ans stop charging the 1%(already whacking ah long rates from cardholders)…those guys makes very little commission per ringgit, if they lose money through robbery,its a big hit to revenue..they are just small entrepreneurs in between fat greedy corporations..

Don’t blame everything on the retailers/operators. They just run a station for our convenience. Do u seriously thing they will earn RM100 everytime u pump in RM100? C’mon…their margin is very little…the rest goes to the Oil & Gas companies like Petronas, Shell, Exxon Mobile, bla bla.

Let me give you an example. A fresh graduate engineer work in a factory earns within the range of RM1800 – RM2800. While the engineers at these Oil & Gas companies earns minimum starting point of RM2500. After 3 years, factory engineer can probably earn RM3000; while in Shell, an engineer’s pay will be within the RM5000 margin. So, who do you think the money goes to?

While we can’t ask them to lower the engineers or their staff’s pay either. They’re working in high risk environment, exposed daily to dangerous toxic & flamable fumes. So, if I would pay someone to do a dirty job, risking their life and health daily, isn’t it fair to pay them higher? I just don’t understand why we cannot accept the fuel cost today…its already so low.

One way to be symbiotic is the association should select several stations to operate during the wee hours (do a study on which areas will require it most). Then, when the number of stations opening 24hours is limited I suppose they can generate better income to cover the operating cost. Or if some station not happy with it…then let them take turn to operate at night. About the armed robbery…its an issue all of us are facing. I got my house robbed twice last month…so what? Now I realise my carelesness…and take preventive measure to overcome and overwit the robbers…they’re not as smart as we are obviously; that’s why they end up being robbers!! =)

Kopial, whats your point? That shell is employing expensive engineers to do dangerous job therefore we want to cut cost for petrol station operator and pass some burden to the consumer?? What about all those soaring profit margin years after years?

Brillant idea ? Increase the petrol price, i seen its just a business tactic for them to push G to had increment due to Oil price increasing. For those think that Petrol Operator can’t make money, you’re wrong. Rethink why 7-11 could operate in wee hours, they’re in same situation anyway. From my view, due to GE coming, G didnt wanted to increase the price after the GE and these petrol operator are likely couldn’t make enough for the sake of god and just come out with such brillant ideas.

This whole closing early petrol station at 10pm and consumer paying the 1% commission by using credit card is totally INSANE!! The best part is with or without govt’s approval.. Guess they are running the country now…

The petrol stations were used to closed at earlier time and in due with the inconveniences to consumers, they offered 24hours stations and now back to the old days? Guess it did not struck their mind that things have changes since back then.. Cars are getting more on the road now and people are working much later now.. So let see the whole picture… People work after 10pm, car no petrol, cannot refill in due to the brilliant idea, no lrt, no buses and taxis operating after that time also due to the brilliant idea.. Guess you have to take a good walk back home..

As for the credit card issue, the best way is to use cash and see whether they will get rob more often or not.. If they want to provide conveniences to their customer, they should not charge customers on it..

Petrol station operators are mostly people loaded with money and they get subsidy from the Oil & Gas Company.. They earn hundreds of thousands a month..And now you want to cut cost based on this ridiculous reasons?? This is insane.. The comments from Malaysia Consumers Association is true.. If you are saying you are losing money due to the overnight operating hours, PLEASE SHOW US THE NUMBERS!!!

soon those 24hrs mamak curry house would be selling petrol..hee hee…anyways..the biggest operating cost for a petrol station is its electricity bills..keeping those pumps on standby will still consume a lot of juice..to make a clean Rm5000..a station must sell at least 8000 litres per day plus some sundry sales..from a working capital of about rm 300k or more for purchase of petrol its considered quite a small return..in fact with the increase of card purchases, most station operators are basically working for the bank..

narrowband, if you convert to NGV, you will be in bigger trouble. for a start, only petronas has the license to sell it. Even though they have a monopoly, very few of their stations actually have it, as the cost to install NGV storage equipment cost about a million ringgit. To make it all worst, there are thousands of taxis'(i’m sure you’ve seen those poor taxi drivers queing up like crazy..) using NGV and they all have to fight to fill up at the few stations around town. Now imagine these stations closing earlier than usual…?

how bout till 12am and 24H for fri, sat and sunday. coz many ppl will have fun at young saturday night. and also put up more patrol to increase the safety at night. about this i wonder where all the police holidaying now?

did they ever think when midnight ppl hav to go for hospital for emergency den no petrol?sigh..they say a lot of robberies at nite den charge us 1% cc..den now who is de robber?do they use they brains to think b4 saying something stupid to everyone?r they making jokes for us to laugh at them or are they truly stupid?

It seems these dealers are not learning from the Petronas ads. A pity. I’d thought that as the price of petrol increase, they’d be able to make more profit and all these kinds of “increased security costs, higher wages for workers, soaring rentals and higher electricity tariffs” problems would nt exist, bt I was wrong it seems.

I totally agree with ya’ll going agaist this pathetic and unjust move by the Petrol Dealers Association of Malaysia. Its bloody bad enough that we’re paying the bomb for petrol nowadays, and now this!. If the Government are not even considered in their decisions, then who the hell have their say in this issue..Aiyoo..some might think that this matter aint that big…but for those whose main activities or business coverage runs till the wee hours, this will definitely be a setback,…logistic companies, bus companies,etc….does this mean we should only consider driving back to kampung during the day time now…say balik Kelantan?…I dont remember having a highway the last time i went back (talk about 24 hours for highway kiosk)…my point is, their decision is adding more weight on us consumers instead of reliefing us with better solutions…..and service….

simple.. just boycott those operators who close at 10pm and patronise those willing to open 24hours.. this will teach then a lesson. as all u mention.. pay cash to those insist on 1% interest.. im sure will be very target for robbers.. coz they will know who the operators are..
their decision damn dumb…. all they think is more profits and less service to the consumers…
all the GOV can do is revoke license of those who following the stupid ruling..

These people are basically holding the government by the b@!!$. You want me to open longer?? Lets do a win-win deal and the loser is obviously the rakyat… Where I heard that before?
But whats new is that now they are openly defiantly, close to threaten everybody…. with or without approval from the government, they are going to shorten the hours……
It seems to me lately, everybody is kurang ajar.. do we still have rules of governance in this country??

1% charge on customers is totally ridiculous! in the US, even dollar store accepts CC but they require you to buy at least $10. they put that at cashers, “minimum CC charge $10”. that means they are paying they 1.xx% charge by most credit cards or 3% by amex, not their customers!. i think if petrol stations want to have something like that, “minimum CC charge – full tank”, is acceptable but i dont know how the charges work here. they still earn 99% of what we pay.

CC is used to ease business transaction and to increase security. so that we don’t have to carry 1″ cash in our hands. if i can pay rm0.89 sayur at a grocery store by CC yes i will. i just hate coins.

It seems that everybody has come to a single agreement and idea that all petrol stations should not be closed 10pm – 7am. For once we unit! That’s cool. And we’ve seen many good ideas why these petrol stations take such a decision. And yes such a decision a complete rubbish and nonsense. Lucky we Malaysians we don’t easily resort to chaos and violent demonstartions to voice our stand and back our rights. If these petrol stations operate in other countries which are infamous of it’s chaos and violent demonstrations then they will know how high is the sky! I bet some petrol stations may end up burnt to the ground! Man… I’m all with ya’ll and really pissed off at the decision particularly the part that says ‘with or without the government approval’. So, what should we do?

I think Petronas, being so-called most patriotic company in Malaysia should take up this responsibility, asking their certain (based on the demand)operators to continue operation to meet the need of the consumers. Then only we can realize that ‘jalan mesti ke depan, bukan ke belakang’. Other petrol stations can happily close business at their desired operation time, cause if they keep operating ‘they are losing money’. Heh.

they are de most selfish person..they just care for their own profit and didnt think bout others..if they wanna go ahead witout government approval den we dun go to their petrol station..let them make loss and make them realise that consumer are more powerfull den them..as long as all de consumers unite,they cant do anything..’jalan mesti pandang ke depan, bukan ke belakang’

Charging 1% or even having a minimum purchase required is a violation of the agreement the petrol station owners originally sign with the credit card companies. You can bet if they try and go through with this the credit card companies will be having words with them. Since it will be money out of their pockets as well, with more people sure to pay in cash instead of charging

These people are incredibly short-sighted. They can only see the 1-3 percent the credit cards take, but forget all about the fact that without credit cards many of the people filling up wouldn’t even have stopped for petrol or bought less due to lack of cash in hand.

Of course another reason they don’t like credit cards is that its harder to evade taxes with that money as compared to cash.

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